


all the light we cannot see

by uselessphillie



Series: hold that pose (for me) [1]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: But it's there, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, Light Angst, M/M, Model!Dan, Sexual Tension, like a lot, no explicit discussion of an eating disorder, photographer!phil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-03-12 03:09:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13538412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uselessphillie/pseuds/uselessphillie
Summary: "Hello, we met for two minutes at a party last weekend and I left because I assumed you were a twat but I’ve been stalking you online and have realized the error of my ways. I’m entranced by your portraits and am desperate to know what it’s like to be photographed by you also you have nice eyes and the memory of your smile helps calm me down so I think I might like to get to know you better would you also like that?"or, the one where phil is the only person to have ever really seen him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i shouted into the void regarding a lack of model!dan / photographer!phil au’s, and when the void did not shout back, i wrote the damn thing myself.

Dan’s only here because PJ is forcing him to be. Dragged out of his bed on a perfectly good Friday night, just when he’d been settling in with a film and a rare bowl of snacks, made to put on trousers and a wrinkly button-up.

“Haven’t you got anything ironed?” PJ chides him, sifting through Dan’s wardrobe for something he can deem party-appropriate.

“People still actually own irons?”

PJ sighs and throws the least offending item at him. “Put this on and get your hair sorted. I’ve told you a hundred times, Dan, you need to start coming to these things. Come out of your shell a bit, learn how to hold a conversation for Christ’s sake!”

“No one wants to hold a conversation with me, Peej. They only want to look at me,” Dan says from his sulking position, hanging upside-down off the end of his bed. He likes the way the world looks like this. Like it stops being real for a second.

PJ sighs again. He sighs a lot these days, around Dan.

“You know that’s not true. Not…entirely true.” Dan rolls his eyes, vacates his sulking position in favor of pushing his manager-slash-sort-of-friend towards the doorway of his room.

PJ grabs onto the doorframe in an attempt to stop himself from being manhandled into the hallway. “Look, Dan, we can talk about this later, okay? Just…come to the party. Just tonight. Mingle, have a drink, let me introduce you to one of my industry guys, and next weekend I _promise_ I’ll leave you alone.”

Dan looks at him evenly. “Fine. Give me fifteen minutes.”

PJ’s complaints of _fifteen what the fuck do you need fifteen minutes for are you holding your hair stylist hostage in your bathroom or something_ are mercifully muffled by the now-closed door.

***

They’re not friends, him and PJ, not really. They could’ve been, Dan thinks, in another life, one where they’d met under better circumstances. One where Dan hadn’t gotten dumped by his old management team every six months for _being so fucking pretentious, complaining about every photographer you meet, no one wants to work with you, can you please give even two fucks about your career?_

In the midst of all of that he’d met PJ, had found him sitting in a corner at another one of these weird industry things. Dan likes people who sit in corners, generally. There’s a certain kinship there. But a year changes a person, and PJ’s made a name for himself in the world of model management, a respectable one, even. He’d dragged Dan up with him kicking and screaming, stony-faced against Dan’s regular bullshit and always saying things like _I know you can be something, why don’t you ever let anyone in, let me help you._

And so Dan had stayed with him. Had even tried to tone down the dramatics a bit on shoots (old habits die hard, though).

He’s thinking about this now, about how they’ve been sort-of friends for a year and yet somehow Dan’s never been in PJ’s house, where the current “party” (what a misnomer, _god_ ) is happening. It’s quite nice, actually, the house – creaky hardwood floors and beautifully carved moldings and an antique chandelier, something out of a 50s noir if it weren’t for all the traffic noise drifting in through the open windows.

He’s been wandering around a bit, trying to avoid being dragged into any more conversations. He’d suffered through the one he’d agreed to back at his flat, and had even asked PJ to introduce him to one more person because he’d felt bad about all the sulking earlier.

(The way PJ had lit up and slung an arm around Dan’s shoulder to propel him through the crowd was worth it.)

He’s made his way through nearly all the rooms on the bottom floor when he spots one of the photographers on his Absolutely Never Again No Matter What PJ Says list making his way over. What was his name again? Jerry? Gerald? Harold? Doesn’t matter; Dan has very clear memories of the way he’d been ogled on set and maneuvered by crusty old hands. He’d rather not relive those particular moments right now, thank you very much.

Dan slips quickly up the stairs, pressing himself against the far wall and listening for any sign of heavy footsteps on the landing. Hearing none, he exhales a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, flattens a hand against his suddenly sweat-curled fringe.

Close one.

_They only want to look at me._

He’s lost in this thought, eyes closed against the onslaught of memories of a thousand eyes on his skin, when a hand presses lightly against his shoulder.

Dan nearly jumps out of his skin, skitters away from the offending limb, opens his eyes to get a good look at whoever is about to be on the receiving end of his _jesus christ you can’t just scare people like that where’s your fucking decency_ rant.

The man in front of him looks just as startled as Dan feels, blue eyes wide and hands defensively out in front of him, like he thinks Dan might try to punch him in the face or something.

“Sorry! Sorry, gosh, I didn’t mean to scare you like that! I just, I saw you downstairs, and I saw that you saw how Harry was about to come over to you, and I saw him down like three glasses of wine at dinner, and I know how he is even when he’s sober, and I just, I don’t know, I wanted to make sure you were alright, or something, and – “

“Stop. Stop, oh my _god_ ,” Dan says, on the edge of a laugh that’s threatening to break free despite his best efforts.

Harry. What an appropriately ugly name, he should’ve remembered that.

“Thank you. For coming to check on me, I mean, not for the scare,” Dan says, putting on his best _I am totally fine and was definitely not about to have a panic attack just now_ smile.

The man breaks into a smile, a nice crinkly one that actually does put Dan’s nerves at ease a bit. “Well, to be honest with you,” the stranger says, adopting an air of fake nonchalance, “I was just looking for an excuse to escape from whatever Dull McDullerson was trying to talk to me about downstairs.”

Dan is properly smiling now, his real one. A fellow corner-dweller.

“You’re Dan, yeah? Howell?”

“You know who I am?”

“Yeah, well, I mean, it’s not like we’ve met before or anything like that. It’s just, I’m a photographer, so it’s kind of…” He makes some sort of gesture with his hand that Dan can’t quite interpret. “My job. To know. You. Models. Young ones, new ones, pretty ones, that sort of thing.”

Oh.

_Oh._

“I’m Phil. Lester? I’ve worked with Peej on some stuff in the past, he’s your manager, yeah? We’ve been friends for ages…”

Phil is saying more things, but Dan isn’t listening. He feels frozen in place, hurtled back into his earlier not-quite-crisis.

_They only want to look at me._

“I have to go,” Dan says, interrupting whatever story Phil has launched into about him and PJ and pushing past him back down the stairs, Harrys of the world be damned. He never should have come here tonight. He never should have done any of this.

***

He’s back to sulking. It’s what he does best. Upside-down on his bed, cocooned in multiple blankets on the couch, flat on his back in the hallway.

He’s also snacking, the guilt of it weighing him down more than a bag of crisps ever could.

Good.

He deserves to feel guilty. Deserves it for letting himself come this far, for being too much of a coward to go back to uni after failing his first semester, for fucking whoring himself out for people to look at, to analyze, to profit, to get off to, whatever.

Somewhere in the middle of all his wallowing, he googles Phil Lester.

There’s a number of images attached to Phil’s name, glossy magazine covers and high-fashion editorial shots. They’re good. Many of them are stunning, actually – beautifully lit and possessing a sort of ethereal-ness about them that makes you want to look for an extra second, then five, then twenty. There’s multiple articles in the recent news results, _Acclaimed London Photographer Returns From French Escapade_ , some extraordinary shots of Paris’ finest women dressed to the nines but posed artfully in the dredges of the city streets.

Dan scrolls further down the Google results to what appears to be Phil’s personal webpage. The work showcased here is totally different – all portraits, in varying shades of grey. He thinks for a moment that it must be a different Phil Lester, but surely there aren’t two London photographers by the same name? He clicks through to the _About_ section and is met with a picture of the man himself, crinkled smile captured candidly as he looks up from his tripod.

 _Pretty_ , Dan thinks, then bats that thought away immediately. That is certainly not the reason why he’d looked Phil up. Not at all.

He keeps the tab with the portraits open, comes back to it in between reruns of _The Office_. Looking at them feels weirdly like intruding on something private, something he wasn’t meant to see. He thinks about wide blue eyes behind the camera, capturing a moment where a subject is not quite themself. Or perhaps it’s the moment where they are most themself. He thinks he might not mind those eyes on him, somehow. Whether or not there’s a camera involved.

Three days go by like this. He’s had his phone turned off, mostly to avoid the texts and missed calls from PJ that are surely piling up.

It’s only a matter of time before there’s a fairly forceful knock on his door.

“Go away!” he calls to the closed door.

There is the distinct sound of something long and pointy being shoved into the lock. It could be a burglar. At 2pm, in the broad daylight of a Tuesday. It could be.

(It’s not.)

They’ve been here before, him and PJ, in their not-quite-friendship. PJ doesn’t take well to being ignored, and his girlfriend’s got a wealth of hair pins ready to be pilfered from her vanity and used for more nefarious purposes. Like breaking into Dan’s flat, for example.

Dan is casually shoveling popcorn into his mouth as PJ appears in the doorway.

“I’ve been calling you. I left you like 40 messages.”

“I know.”

“You’re ignoring me.”

“Yes.”

“You left the party early without saying goodbye and have been ignoring me ever since.”

“It’s not about you.”

PJ snatches the snack bowl out of Dan’s hands.

“What’s it about then, Dan? Hm?” There’s barely-concealed anger in PJ’s voice. Maybe this will be it, Dan thinks. Maybe PJ really will leave Dan to rot this time.

He lets that thought go in favor of a more pressing matter.

“How do you know Phil Lester?”

PJ’s anger falters for a second in favor of confusion. “Phil? We went to uni together, he’s a big photographer now, just got back from France and won’t shut up about it, hang on – how do _you_ know Phil?”

Dan makes a successful grab for his popcorn bowl. Distraction works every time. “Met him at your godforsaken party.”

“You voluntarily talked to someone without me?” PJ looks equal parts delighted and mystified.

“No, he started it. Harry from the List was after me.”

“What are you on about? What list?”

Dan sighs, exasperated. “The _List_ , Peej, keep up will you, you know the List. Have you got his number?”

PJ’s face is a mask of confusion as he sinks down onto to couch opposite Dan. “Whose? Harry from the List?”

“Oh my _god_ , Peej. Phil. Have you got Phil’s number?”

“Why would you need Phil’s number?”

Dan flinches back for some reason, even though PJ’s tone isn’t even close to accusatory. How could it be, Dan’s got nothing to be accused of, he’s not done anything, for fuck’s sake. He pulls his blanket up around his head in an attempt to make himself look smaller, hoping that PJ will stop asking questions and just hand over the info. “No reason.”

There is a silence in which Dan pretends to be very focused on Dwight’s on-screen antics.

“Huh,” PJ says, finally, and Dan chances a glance to his right. PJ is sifting through the pile of junk mail on the coffee table for something to write on. He holds out an envelope with 11 digits freshly scrawled across the back. “Can you come to the client meeting on Thursday? They want to have a final fitting for two of the pieces before the shoot.”

Dan looks at him fully now, lets a few seconds pass while he tries, and fails, to decipher what, exactly, is happening here. “I’ll be there,” he says softly, gingerly grasping the edge of the envelope that’s been extended to him.

PJ keep his grip of the other end. Dan squirms a bit under his even gaze. “Good,” PJ says, releasing the envelope into Dan’s care and making his way back towards the door.

“Stop ignoring my calls,” he says as he reaches the threshold.

“I will,” Dan says, and finds that he means it.

PJ nods, seemingly to himself, as he closes the door behind him.

***

He goes to the client meeting. He does not, however, call Phil.

He dials the number at least a hundred times and hangs up before the call can even connect. What would he even say? _Hello, we met for two minutes at a party last weekend and I left because I assumed you were a twat but I’ve been stalking you online and have realized the error of my ways. I’m entranced by your portraits and am desperate to know what it’s like to be photographed by you also you have nice eyes and the memory of your smile helps calm me down so I think I might like to get to know you better would you also like that?_

No. He definitely can’t say any of that.

Just to keep up the stalker image, he looks up the address of Phil’s studio online and starts the walk across the city. He’s not going /to/ the studio, _obviously_ , he’s no lunatic, it’s just that the coffee house on the next street sells the blueberry muffins he’s been craving and well, if he’s in the area already…

It’s Sunday. Phil wouldn’t be there anyway. Who the fuck works on a Sunday?

It’s also raining. He’s got his slicker on but no umbrella, and really, he is getting thoroughly drenched standing out here. That’s an excuse to just knock on the door, right? _Sad and Lonely Model Seeks Shelter From Storm_.

God, what is _wrong_ with him?

He crosses the street before he can stop himself.

He waits so long after knocking that he’s certain Phil isn’t there, of course he isn’t, this whole stupid idea was a big stupid mistake –

He hears the lock turn from the inside.

“Hello? Oh – hello!”

Phil smiles, actually fucking smiles, at the sight of Dan drenched and unexpected on his doorstep. Maybe they’re both lunatics.

“Hi. Uhhh…” Dan starts eloquently, having no idea where that sentence will end.

“You should come in. From the rain,” Phil says, holding the door open wider. Dan, completely on autopilot in this alternate dimension where this is actually happening, steps through.

“Stay here, I’ll get you a towel,” Phil says, disappearing up a set of metal floating stairs off to the left of the space.

Dan is left to survey the rest of studio as he tries not to drip rainwater all over the polished concrete floor. It’s basically one big, open room. There’s various pieces equipment scattered across it, tripods and ring lights and rolls of backdrops in black, white, and every shade of muted gray and eggshell in between. The far wall is almost entirely made of windows, showcasing the dreary London skyline. The space reads as surprisingly industrial, in stark contrast to the man currently bounding back down the staircase.

Phil is the opposite of dreary, wearing a blue shirt loudly patterned with corgis and two different socks, one with cacti and the other with sharks. Dan makes an attempt to dry himself off with the towel he is offered. It’s only slightly more successful than his attempt to come up with an explanation for what the hell he’s doing here.

“I was wondering when I’d see you again,” Phil says, hurtling Dan out of his thoughts. “PJ mentioned that you’d asked after me.”

What a fucking traitor. Him and PJ will be having _words_ later.

“I…may have done something like that. It’s just that, well, you said at the party that you were a photographer, and it just so happens that I’m in need of some photographs,” Dan explains, the excuse for his (apparently expected) presence taking shape as he says it.

“Oh, is that right?” Phil says in a tone that indicates he doesn’t quite buy Dan’s explanation. Dan is momentarily distracted by the way Phil’s tongue pokes out from behind his smile. Fucking hell.

Annoyed by his inability to _get a fucking grip_ , Dan tries to slip into his work persona, injecting as much confidence as he can muster into his voice. “That’s right. PJ’s been pestering me about getting new headshots for months. After we met, I had a look at your work and I think that we could have a prosperous…business relationship.”

“People usually call me on the phone to inquire about potential…business relationships. During normal business hours. Instead of, you know, turning up on my doorstep on a Sunday.”

There’s not an ounce of anger in Phil’s voice, but Dan feels himself turning every shade of pink at being caught out. He truly did not think this plan through, per usual. He opens his mouth to say something, _anything_ , but Phil beats him to it.

“Can you come back on Wednesday? I have a shoot in the morning, but we should be wrapped by one o’clock. The afternoon light is really lovely in here when London isn’t being…” He gestures to the rain splattering against the window wall. “…London. I think the storm should’ve passed by then, don’t you?”

Dan has almost certainly been transported to that alternate dimension.

“Y-yes! Definitely, I – yeah, yes, I can be here on Wednesday. Sounds good.”

Phil looks at him with a soft smile, and Dan is so incredibly, absolutely, fucked.

“I didn’t know your hair was curly,” Phil says unexpectedly, dragging his gaze north. “It’s straight in all your pictures.”

Dan presses a hand to his fringe self-consciously. Bloody rain. “Yeah, I – I don’t like it much,” he stammers out.

“Really? I’m quite fond of it.” Phil says, reaching out and twining one of Dan’s curls around his finger gently. “You should leave it curly. On Wednesday. When you come here. For photographs.”

“O-okay,” Dan says dumbly. “I will.”

“Okay. Good. See you Wednesday, Dan.”

Dan nods, not really trusting himself to say anything else, and starts to make his way back towards the door.

“Hang on, let me give you something!” Phil jogs across the space, digging through a pile a miscellaneous items on a table by the stairs. He produces an umbrella out of the chaos, handing it to Dan. “Don’t want you catching pneumonia and having to cancel on me.”

Dan rolls his eyes but accepts the offering. “No, certainly not. Bye, Phil.”

“Bye, Dan.”

***

“PJ. For the millionth time, it is _not_ a date.”

“I never said it was! I just said that if it _was_ a date, it’d be nice!”

They’re in his room again, although this time its Dan doing the deliberating in front of his closet.

“It’s just a shoot. For new headshots.”

“You just got new ones two months ago.”

“Fuck off and help me pick something, will you?”

It’s just that, in the agonizing three days since he’s seen Phil, Dan is starting to feel like it might be a date. A work-date. Where they work. But also where they don’t work. In the upstairs part of Phil’s studio, which he’s learned from PJ is not part of said studio, but is actually Phil’s living space.

Hence the closet-deliberation.

PJ, unhelpful as ever, starts up his monologue on how Dan should really start branching out from only black clothing, there are other colors you know, and warm tones would bring out your eyes, etc.

He settles on a black jumper with delicate gold stitching, one of his favorites. It’s loose fitting and shows off quite a bit of his collarbones. Not that he’s been thinking about showing off his collarbones to anyone in particular.

PJ sends him off with a slap on the back and a “call me later!” as he disappears down the street. Dan takes a few deep breaths as he starts his own walk and tries not to think about it too much. That’s how he usually approaches all of his other photoshoots, anyway, tries to blank out his mind and let the photographer mold him into whatever they want him to be. It’s easier that way.

He dithers outside Phil’s door in a final attempt to get a handle on his nerves. True to Phil’s predictions, the weather has cleared and it’s actually quite pleasant out. It’s still a bit chilly for April, but the sun feels warm and bright on his skin.

He knocks.

***

Phil turns out to be quite the professional, and the familiarity of the process tempers Dan’s anxiety a bit. Phil chats with him amicably about this and that as he sets up, fiddling with his camera settings and drawing curtains across some of the windows. Dan watches the way the shadows scatter across the floor from his place on his stool.

“I always do portraits in the afternoon,” Phil says as he clambers down from his curtain-adjusting ladder. “It’s the way the light is, see how the sun slants perfectly through the windows? I had to have this place, when I was looking for a studio, you know? Because of all the windows – they’re southern facing, too, that’s the best direction for windows. Well, unless you’re in Australia I suppose, because then everything’s upside down, and – sorry, I’m rambling!”

“I don’t mind,” Dan says, and means it. “Usually no one talks to me when I’m on a shoot, unless it’s to tell me where to put one of my many limbs.” Dan sticks out his arms and legs in an attempted mockery of his too-long body.

Phil’s laugh echoes across the concrete and metal. It colors the space in like no model or flashy piece of clothing ever could.

“Your limbs look just lovely to me, Dan.” He swears Phil throws him a wink between his giggles.

Phil checks the camera settings one final time and scoots the tripod a few centimeters to the left before settling himself atop a nearby table, folding his legs up underneath himself.

“What’s that?” Dan gestures to a small device curled in Phil’s right hand.

“My magic button,” Phil replies, accompanied by some truly ridiculous eyebrow wiggling that sends Dan into his own fit of giggles. Phil presses down on the button, and Dan hears the click of the camera shutter.

“Okay you weirdo,” Dan says, trying to school his features into something more worthy of a professional photography studio.

Phil leans forward casually, resting his chin in his empty hand. “So tell me how you started modeling.”

Dan shrugs, unconsciously inclining his body towards Phil. “Dunno. Guess I just sort of fell into it. Dropped out of uni and needed the money, mostly.”

“But do you like it?”

More shrugging. No one ever asks him this stuff. “I like the clothes. I like being on location, getting to travel a bit.”

“And the people?”

Now Dan’s the one raising an eyebrow.

“You’re notoriously hard to work with, Daniel. I just want to know what I’m getting myself into here.” Phil’s voice is devoid of malice, the corner of his lips curved upwards.

“Is that what PJ told you? That I’m difficult?”

“He told me that you think no one ever really sees you.”

Dan looks directly at Phil then, wide-eyed and a bit flustered.

_click_

Phil tilts his head to one side, contemplating. There’s a silence in which Dan forgets how to breathe. “How many men have looked at you only through a lens, hm? A hundred? More than that? Looked at you from behind their cameras and thought, he’s lovely. He’s got beautiful, sharp features and we should light him from his left side and we should ask him to leave his hair curly so that the softness of it will create some contrast, except that you never do leave it curly and all of your photos are lit from the right.”

_click_

“Except you show up on my doorstep knowing that I light from the left. Always.”

_click_

“And with your hair quite a mess. A lovely mess, by the way. You look more like yourself. I can tell that, and I don’t even know you.”

“You could,” Dan says, finally.

_click_

“I could,” Phil agrees. “I would. If you’d let me.”

_click_

_click_

_click_

“I will.”


	2. Chapter 2

The upstairs of Phil’s studio, as it turns out, is nothing like the downstairs.

Like the studio space, Phil’s flat is open and well-lit by a plethora of windows. As they come to the top of the staircase, they come upon what Dan presumes was meant to be an office area, but the desk has been positively overrun with papers and filing folders. This appears to be a running theme throughout the apartment, as Phil proceeds to trip over a stack of books lying on the floor on his way to put the kettle on.

“Sorry for the…mess,” Phil says, gesturing to the general disorder of the space. “I don’t like to keep things downstairs where clients can see.”

“Thought I _was_ a client,” Dan remarks, eyebrow raised.

Phil’s tongue does that _thing_ again, poking out from behind his smile. “Right. Yeah. ‘Course. Quite cold today though, it wouldn’t be proper of me to send you off without some tea first. Make yourself at home.”

Dan picks his way through the towers of books, which seem to be preparing for their impending invasion of Phil’s lounge. “You’re someone who cares a lot about propriety them, hm?” he says as he reaches the kitchen.

Phil pours water into the kettle. “Of course! I’m a professional, after all,” he says, in a tone that somehow indicates the exact opposite.

Dan rummages through the cabinets in search of some mugs. “So you wouldn’t dream of say, digging up dirt on your clients via their friend-slash-manager in order to determine the best way to entice them to stick around after a shoot, would you?”

It’s forward of him, he knows, but something about the events of the last half hour has given him a surge of bravery.

Or maybe it’s stupidity.

He squirms a bit under the intensity of Phil’s gaze, his brain already compiling a list of ways he can backtrack out of that sentence.

Phil is suddenly very close to him, pressing a warm mug into his palms and covering Dan’s hands with his own. “Are you accusing me of trying to seduce you, Daniel?”

_Oh._

_Bravery, let it be bravery._

“Maybe,” he breathes out.

Phil makes a considering noise, soft and low, stroking a thumb over Dan’s knuckles. An eternity passes, just like that, before “I want to show you something.”

Dan mind is reeling as Phil steps away, picking up his own mug of tea before disappearing back towards the lounge. What else can he do except follow?

Phil is kneeling in front of what Dan presumes is his coffee table – it’s hard to tell any of Phil’s furniture apart with the way papers and books and _stuff_ is precariously stacked on every surface. Despite the overwhelming clutter, Phil seems to know exactly what he’s looking for as he rifles through a pile of thick fashion magazines. Dan takes a seat on a nearby sofa, reaching out to save Phil’s tea from its imminent demise on the edge of one of the paper mountains.

“Aha!” Phil exclaims, waving one the magazines triumphantly above his head. “Found it!”

He catches a glimpse of the cover as Phil starts flipping through the pages, still in pursuit of whatever it is he wants to show Dan. It’s the winter edition of a small fashion journal that he’s pretty sure is no longer even in business. Why does that feel familiar somehow?

He’s racking his brain for answers when Phil suddenly appears next to him on the sofa, shoving the glossy paper into his hands. He takes a sharp inhale of breath when he sees what’s on the page in front of him.

It’s a profile of him that’d been shot nearly a year ago, one the first projects PJ had arranged for him. He remembers now – the journal had been doing a series on “emerging fashion icons,” pairing new designers with young models in an attempt to highlight up-and-coming people in the industry. His designer had been quite lovely, actually. Amelia. Her line had consisted of lots of violet and black florals, because _things can still flourish, Dan, even in darkness_. Dan had rolled his eyes when she’d told him that but asked if he could keep one of the pieces anyway, a soft black jumper with lilacs delicately stitched onto the sides. He’d snuck eighty quid under a paperweight on her desk when he’d picked it up at her studio, although it was probably worth much more.

Dan’s wearing that piece in the main shot of the spread, his right arm tucked up behind his head in order to accentuate the pattern. His eyes drift off to the side of the shot, seemingly focused on something in the middle distance. He remembers now, though, that he just couldn’t bear to look the photographer in the eye (or anywhere close, for that matter). Not after he’d fiddled for ages with the hem of the jumper, pulling it down over Dan’s too-prominent hipbones and letting his hands skirt over Dan’s ass while he did so.

“This was the first photograph I ever saw of you,” Phil says, startling Dan out of his memories.

Dan’s mouth is bone-dry. He takes a shaky sip of his tea. It doesn’t help.

“It’s not a very good photo,” he manages to croak out. That’s not quite true, objectively speaking. But he’ll allow himself some bias.

Phil seems to mull Dan’s opinion over, sinking back into the sofa cushions and propping his feet up on a stack of nearby novels. He leans across Dan to take back the magazine. Dan finds it a bit easier to breathe without it in his hands.

“Well, it’s not how I would have gone about getting that shot, personally,” Phil says. He tilts his head back and studies the ceiling, like he’s trying to arrange his next words into the correct order. “I was in Paris, doing all this avant-garde stuff, you know? And it felt like I didn’t belong there, like I was in way over my head. Which I totally was, by the way.” He turns his head to look at Dan, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards.

_(your smile helps calm me down)_

“And I got this in the mail one day, I used to get all the London journals sent to me while I was away. And I saw you and I just…I thought…”

“Thought what?” It’s hard to speak above a whisper, here.

“I thought it looked like you didn’t belong there, either.” Phil is whispering, too. “I looked and looked and I… _wished_ for you to just appear in Paris so that…so that I could…”

The quiet stretches between them and Dan reaches a hand out into it before he can stop himself, connects with Phil’s knee. Leaves his hand there, warm and grounding, in the place where the fabric of Phil’s jeans is soft and worn through.

“Could what?”

“I don’t know!” Phil exhales something between a laugh and a whine. “I don’t know. It know it sounds ridiculous. But. It just. Feels like I’ve been waiting for you.”

“I’m here.”

***

Dan, admittedly, has not kissed anyone in a while. But kissing Phil feels like second nature, a reflex. Like the way you can pour just the right amount of milk into your tea without thinking.

How he got here is a bit of a blur really, with a thigh on either side of a fucking _photographer_ , for Christ’s sake. But somewhere in the last hour, Phil has stopped being a photographer and started just being Phil, Phil with a house full of other worlds and a laugh that erases dullness and hands rucked up under Dan’s jumper.

“Dan.” Phil breaks away from his mouth in favor of pressing kisses along Dan’s jaw. “Can I tell you something?”

“What?” Dan breathes out, preoccupied with chasing after more of Phil’s skin.

“I was – _oh_ – earlier, I _was_ trying to seduce you.”

The laugh bursts out of him, bright and airy and full and Phil is dumping Dan out of his lap, still consumed by giggles, pulling him up by the hand and tracing a delicate path through chaos.

_It feels like I’ve been waiting for you, too._


	3. Chapter 3

_ bzzzzzzt. bzzzzzzt. bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt. _

Dan reaches one of his arms over the edge of the bed, feeling along the floor for the source of his rude awakening. Still half asleep, he answers the call without even looking to see who it is.

“Hmmm?”

“Dan? Have you been murdered in the night or something? I told you to call me!”

Fuck. PJ.

“Uhhh,” he starts, eloquent as ever. Next to him, Phil is making his way back towards consciousness, fitting himself more tightly against Dan’s side and pressing cold feet into his calf.

“Who’re you talkin’ to?” Phil asks, voice thick with sleep. “Tell them you’ll call them back, you’ve not got time to chat right now.” Phil stretches his long body up, nosing gently along Dan’s jaw and Dan thinks  _ no, I really don’t _ .

“Who’s that? Dan? Oh  _ fuck _ , are you at Phil’s?” The timbre of PJ’s voice goes high and shrill, causing Dan to pull the phone away from his ear.

“Is that PJ? Let me talk to him,” Phil says, making a grab for the phone. Dan makes a small noise of protest as it slips from his grasp.

“Hi Peej,” Phil says into the phone, shuffling back a bit to look at Dan properly. The next 60 seconds take an eternity to pass, with Phil making the occaisional “yeah” or “mhmm” as PJ shouts down the line at him.

It’s not lost on Dan that he’s yet to get a word in edgewise in this conversation. 

“Okay Peej, Dan says I have to hang up now. Talk soon, yeah?” Dan opens him mouth to assert that he had said no such thing, thank you very much, but Phil is already disconnecting the call and tossing Dan’s phone back into the abyss of his clothing scattered across the floor. 

Dan says, “I’ll be the one paying for that, you know,” but Phil is laughing and pressing Dan down into the mattress and so any scolding he may or may not endure from PJ later ceases to matter.

They stay tangled up together while the late morning sun pours in through the windows

_ from the left, always from the left _

and Dan thinks about how people have been calling him beautiful for years but he’s never felt it in his bones, not until now.

“Look so gorgeous like this,” Phil murmurs to the jut of Dan’s hipbone, where he’ll surely have a mark tomorrow. “Wish I had my camera.”

_ You could _ , Dan thinks, threading a hand into Phil’s hair and tugging a bit.  _ I’d let you. You make me reckless. _

***

Phil makes an expedition into the kitchen for sustinence while the sun arches high into the afternoon. Dan watches him slip on the gold-stitched jumper he’d agonized over yesterday, despite Phil having an entire closet of his own to choose from. 

It coils something tightly in his gut, the sight of Phil wearing his clothes. Some sense of belonging, Dan thinks.  _ His Phil. _

He can choose not to dwell about the implications of that feeling, for now.

Phil returns with two mugs and a plate piled high with jammy toast, the strong scent of coffee following him through the doorway. A small stack of glossy photographs tumbles off the nightstand as he sets the dishes down, and Dan can’t bite back his questions any longer.

“Can I ask you something?” he says as Phil crawls back under the duvet. 

Phil reaches back across Dan’s body for one of the coffees, hums an affirmation. He makes himself a home tucked in against Dan’s side.

Dan gestures broadly at all the  _ stuff _ . “All this...why? I feel sort of like I should nominate you for an episode of  _ Hoarders _ or something.”

Phil laughs, the force of it rumbling through Dan chest. “Oh come off it, it’s not that bad!”

“Phil.”

“Dan.”

“You have a problem!”

“I do not!” Phil sits up, turning to face Dan. “All of these things, they mean something. Maybe not to me, not always, but to someone they’re important. Or they could be, in the future. I never know who’s going to walk into the studio, Dan! I never know what they’re going to need me to give them, or what they’ll need to give to me.”

Phil is gersturing animatedly now, coffee threateing to spill over the lip of his mug at every exclamation. 

“And all the - all the photos, the ones that never get published.” He points towards the stack that had met its demise against the jammy toast. “The ones that the clients never even see. I know it sounds crazy. But I just - I can’t get rid of them. It’s like I’d be getting rid of a little part of that person, a part of themselves they might not even know about! Like - that journal, right, the one that did the profile on you? I didn’t keep it just to keep it, just to put it on top of another stack and let it collect dust!”

“Then why did you keep it, hm?”

Phil goes still, finally.

“Because...because I saw something that I wasn’t ready to give up. That’s just what it’s like, to always be looking into people. You get attached. Even when you don’t mean to. And I’m just - ” Phil gestures around the room with his non-coffee arm. “Very bad at letting go, it seems.” He laughs weakly and a bit wetly, not meeting Dan’s eyes.

Dan lets the quiet stretch between them, awash in a wave of understanding.

“Well it’s a good thing I don’t want you to let go of me then, isn’t it?”

He watches the smile bloom across Phil’s face, feels it color in all the in between spaces in his heart.

“Funny how that worked out.”

***

“Show me the photos you took.”

They’re back under the duvet, Phil’s knobby knees pressing into the soft flesh of his thighs. The sun is beginning to sink below the London skyline.

Phil is quiet for a long time, steady breaths warming the back of Dan’s neck. He presses a single kiss against Dan’s shouder before slowly untangling himself from the mess of limbs and bedcovers. “Okay.”

He retuns with his laptop and sits down on the edge of the bed, folding his legs up under himself. Phil faces towards him, so that Dan can’t see the screen. 

Phil clicks through the photos, his face a mask of concentration and neutrality. After what feels like an eternity to Dan, Phil holds the laptop out to him. “This one.”

Dan can hear his pulse roaring in his ears. He tries to remember how it felt to look at Phil’s other portraits, the way they made him want to stare at them for hours just to try and catch a glimpse of what Phil saw.

Phil is watching him closely now, expression soft as Dan accepts the laptop from him.

***

It makes his heart ache to look at it. The way it’s meant to ache sometimes, when you’re putting the pieces of yourself back together.

He must stare at it for a long time, because Phil is reaching out for him and swiping a thumb across some sudden moisture on his cheek. “Hey, don’t cry,” Phil says softly, closing the laptop and pushing it to the side in favor of gathering Dan up in his arms. “I don’t want you to cry.”

“Sorry, sorry, fuck.” Dan digs his fingers into the material of the jumper Phil’s got on, still the same one Dan had worn to the shoot yesterday. A yesterday that feels like a lifetime ago. “I’m not - I’m not crying because of - “ He stops short, realizing that he has no way to artculate why he’s crying, actually. “I just don’t know where you came from,” he laughs wetly into Phil’s shoulder, trying desperately to ground himself.

“I told you, it’s me who’s been waiting here for you, Dan.”

Dan thinks that that doesn’t seem quite right, not when he’s spent his whole life feeling invisible. 

He watches the last ray of sun disappear over Phil’s shoulder, but it doesn’t feel dark. 

_ You found me. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this story made me fall back in love with writing. thanks for reading xx
> 
> reblog this fic on tumblr [here](https://uselessphillie.tumblr.com/post/170363748195/all-the-light-we-cannot-see-chapter-one-read-on)


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